Ona Gets Hypothermia, Sees Fish Heads
Trip Start
Jun 30, 2006
1
8
42
Trip End
Jun 30, 2007
Kizhi,
Russian Federation
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
But find it again I did, Kizhi Island, 8 hours by train and 1 and a half by hydrofoil away from St. Petersburg. Charis at this point was so entirely over Russia, over getting tickets and over being on public transport for half a day at a time, and declined any such expedition. Well, I thought, I cannot end up like the kindly Romanian in our room, claiming I would go to Novgorod each and every day, for it was my dream, but then not going at all. I would go on my own, take 300 photos, and promptly return 2 nights later.
Chapel
I took the train, was seated in a couchette with a man who spoke English (for some reason we always had someone in our couchette who spoke either English or Polish, despite these people being ever-so-rare everywhere else), and got to Petrozavodsk with no hassles at all.
It was about 6am at this point, and once I got to the harbour the atmosphere was great: it was on the gulf of Finland, and it had that sort of grey, frigid, windy Northern fishing village feeling about it. I know that sounds rather depressing, but at this point it was quite the opposite - it was cold and windy, but an uplifting and energizing cold and windy, after the disgusting heat of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Though I'd never actually SEEN a frigid Northern fishing village before, it reminded me exactly of the one in The Shipping News by Proulx.
My wonderful excitement at the environment and the weather was not to last long. Invigoration windy I could handle, but not anything more, as I'd taken with me from St. Petersburg only a shirt, a light over-shirt with three-quarter sleeves, cotton pants and suede boots. Never mind the fact that at 9.5 hours north from St. Petersburg it was practically at the North Pole. I doubt it would have gotten dark at night time at all, and if it did it wouldn't have lasted more than half an hour.
So, it was not for the best that in the middle of the hydrofoil trip it started pouring down frigid rain. It didn't stop pouring down frigid rain once I got to the island, and continued for the entire duration of our stay. The wind, unhampered by landmass
(Kizhi Island was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sea, or gigantic river, or whatever it was), was about 300 times stronger and colder than the 'invigorating wind' I had praised before
Field
. I had no umbrella, no jacket, shoes that soaked through at the merest sign of moisture, was just recovering from a cold, and I now had to go tramping all over this gigantic island in 5 degree temperatures with no cover, attempting to take decent photos to prove that I had, in fact, been here.It seemed dismal at first, and I joined everyone in the souvenier shops. Everyone, I noticed, had thought to bring jackets and umbrellas, and they were still shacked up here far away from the church. Finally I found a souvenier shop selling overpriced umbrellas with heinous patterns on them, and despite their aesthetic unpleasantness I was glad to buy one. It turned out to have an overly-dramatic automatic fold-out function, which quite amused me.
I ventured out and somehow in the space of an hour I did get the photos I so wanted
(although my vantage points were limited - I could only face the church in one direction, in the other my umbrella would get ripped out of my hands, and my lens splattered with rain), along with shoes and socks that were saturated, and pants wet up to my thighs. But still, it was worth the hypothermia. The church looked amazing close up, all onion domes covered in glittering silvery tiles, and from far away it looked even better, ever so much the crazy castle out of a movie
Hydrofoil
.I got back to Petrozavodsk freezing but happy, to be faced with another unfortunate fact. Given the fact it was so cold and still raining, and that I was so wet, I wouldn't be able to wander around the city, and would have to wait inside at the station, waiting for my train. For 7 hours. Even now I don't know how the hell I got through something as god-awfully boring as sitting on the ground at a train station for 7 hours, staring at nothingness with not even a book to read. I made a brief venture to the convenience store, where I bought some bright pink fish in bright yellow sauce, and some caviar-flavoured chips. The chips were nice enough, the fish was pretty atrocious, but I had expected as much.
2 hours into the wait I went on the mission to try and find the ticket sales counter. There is always about 4 different areas with about 6 counters each, with different Cyrillic signs above them. Unfortunately, Lonely Planet was silent as to which counter said domestic, international, etc, so after the first confused bout of trying to buy a domestic ticket at an international and being frantically yelled and waved at by the ticket lady (thank god it was the country, and so she at least tried to indicate where to go, unlike Moscow where at the first sign of you speaking anything other than perfect Russian, or attempting to ask something in English when theres an English 'INFORMATION' sign above them, they wave you away and yell 'Nyet!'), we tried to decipher signs around the place and quantity of people and figure it out for ourselves
Kizhi Church 1
.Even once you get to the correct counter it is still a mission half the time. Of course, one must be adequately prepared and promptly say '_ tickets, city, class required' in Russian. But still they manage to come up with incomprehensible questions, resulting in the next 6 people in the line behind you repeating the same question, in Russian, just louder, before comically miming to try and make you understand. Eventually something gets accomplished, that or they give up and decide the answer to the question themselves.
Ticket in hand, I was now forced to find something else to occupy my time. So I sat at a new place, staring into space, at least this time on a chair. What I did notice, however, was the Russian fixation with cats, and with carrying cats on public transport in inappropriate containers.
Cats are everywhere in Russia, although not in the same way as in Greece. In Greece they are precocious little kittens hanging around archaeological sites apparently belonging only to themselves, well-fed, but still with enough gall to leap up onto your lap 3-at-a-time and stick their head into your tea. In Russia, things are a bit different. Cats apparently only have three suitable living-spaces: 1. Kittens hanging off window-sills, 2. Kittens in boxes outside train stations, and, 3. In peoples' plastic bags at train stations and on trains.
1, I suppose, can be explained by over-protective owners locking them indoors, and the poor dears longing for freedom, glancing wistfully outside
Kizhi Church 2
. The 2nd, perhaps, is a tad more depressing. Want a kitten? Want 40? You can have the 40 all at once outside metro stations, where they will all be lying on top of each other in a solitary box, watched over by the seller, waiting for their new owners. Initially, being the naïve bint I am, went 'Awwwww, how adorable!', until Charis once again crushed my delusions with the ever-logical thought that most of them are probably put to death. But still, it's not all bad, there were tables with 5 boxes of kittens each, hundreds of wee things, so they must be bred on purpose to sell, and not just be a bunch of accidents that have to be disposed of one way or another.And now we come to number 3. Cats in plastic bags. Older Russians and homeless Russians seem to find a cure for their loneliness in these wee cute felines and feel compelled to carry them around on trains, mostly in plastic bags. I assume they are banned on trains and in stations, otherwise nothing accounts for the sneaky way in which they are fed and, occasionally, pulled out of their bags for a full-body stretch in mid-air, hanging from their hind legs. And nary a squeak from them at this bizarre treatment.
Well, 2 hours sitting here in the same place was quite enough. With 3 hours left, I resigned myself to walking around the station and finding another identical chair to sit in, but with the important distinction of being in a different room. I bought a roll on the way, which was a bit of a mistake. Russian white bread is without doubt the worst in the world. Even the freshest will taste and feel 3 weeks old.
And that was about it. Apart from one always-charming trip to the squat pay toilet, (even Japan, which I adore, couldn't make me accept squat toilets, so you can imagine what I thought when 95% of pay toilets in Russia were squat toilets with the most excruciating perculiar smell) my Kizhi adventure was over. I had successfully gone 9 hours to Kizhi and back, and hadn't gotten lost once!
